Since my first whiff of lavender water at the age of 11 I've known that I am heterosexual. I had this strong desire to be near the opposite sex.

I sought them out on buses to school, I carried their satchels, I became all tongue-tied when I was where I wanted to be.

Nothing has changed in the last sixty two years.

I have been blessed with a wonderfully close and intimate heterosexual life and it has developed into a strong and deep friendship.

But what if I had been similarly drawn towards my own sex? What if I'd felt sexually attracted to my own as I grew up?

What if I had had to live that awful lie that approximately one in 10 of my men friends has had to endure?

My heart bleeds for these young people who are so obviously gay.

Will they try and bury their innermost feelings? Will they appease their adoring mums and marry that lovely girl from just down the street?

Will they live covert love lives with a close male friend, scared sick that someone will notice them in love, will catch them in a compromising position; blackmail them?

They say that love and a cough are both difficult to hide. What a nightmare.

Why would anyone, be they male or female want to be gay with all the opprobrium that it brings into their life?

Some suggest that homosexuality is sometimes just an affectation, or caused by having an overbearing mother.

Rubbish, I say, if you are homosexual it's because you are genetically disposed to be so.

And then there are the archaic views of the churches, who for some prehistoric reason cannot drag themselves into the 21st century and accept what to most people is plain as a pike staff, that homosexuality is an integral part of mankind's overall human genetic structure.

Their most infamous debating point is to quote that old mythical book, the Bible, from the book of Leviticus, chapter 18 verse 22, which states that homosexuality cannot be condoned in any way or circumstance because it is "an abomination" - end of debate.

The Bible is a dangerous debating tool for there will always be a yin and a yang.

If you must obey this condemning law about homosexuality, must you also fall into line with Leviticus 25:44 which states that you may possess slaves, both male and female.

Also in Exodus 21:7 you would be allowed to sell your daughter into slavery. I wonder what sort of price I'd get on my two?

Leviticus 21:12 states quite clearly that you cannot approach the altar of God if you have a defect in your sight.

Now the last time I was in church I'm quite sure that the majority of those taking communion wore spectacles; is their presence there another abomination?

Now many in the church maintain that the word of God is indeed eternal and unchanging - what a quandary for Christians.

The real abomination in all this is that some reasonably well educated people will rely on a single quote from the Bible written over 2000 years ago to bolster up their weird and illogical hatred of homosexuals in their midst.

Surely the time has come to grow up, exert some compassion and "love thy fellow man" in all his or her states.

I'm glad I'm a heterosexual and have not had to suffer this strange hatred; though I do have one wee complaint about the growing vociferousness of the gay communities.

It sometimes appears to me that homosexuality has become not "the love that dare not speak its name" but "the love that never knows when to shut up".